Thomas Behrends has often spoken out about presumptive Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz since the latter retired from the military right before his 2005 Iraq deployment.
You’ll hear the left praise Walz for being a National Guardsman, but…what did he do?
He quit.
Walz served for 24 years in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery. But he retired “months after a warning order that the battalion would be deployed to Iraq.”
He ran for Congress and won a seat in 2006.
Behrends has brought up the situation many times.
Now that Walz is the likely VP candidate, Behrends is shouting it out again.
“I needed to hit the ground running and take care of the troops — and tell them we were going to war,” Behrends told The New York Post. “For a guy in that position to quit is cowardice.”
Behrends and others consider Walz a traitor.
“When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle — not the other way,” continued Behrends. “He ran away. It’s sad.”
Behrends added: “He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice-president.”
Walz tried to remain in their good graces by offering “to raise funds to cover his fellow soldiers’ bus trips home for Christmas.”
The soldiers saw right through him as some considered it as a “cynical ploy.”
“If it were me, I would feel guilty about leaving and do something to make up for it, but if you ask me he was doing it to buy votes,” said Behrends. “He will do anything for votes.”
Walz’s unit lost three men in Iraq, including Kyle Miller, who was only 19 at the time:
Like Walz, Miller signed up for the National Guard in high school, and hoped to work as an auto mechanic after his deployment, according to reports. He died when the vehicle in which he was a passenger was hit by a roadside bomb on June 29, 2006.“Unlike Walz, Kyle volunteered to go with his unit,” said Behrends, who worked with Miller’s mother, Cathy Miller, to create a bronze memorial of her son.
Behrends and retired Guardsman Paul Herr slammed Walz in 2018 during his first campaign for Minnesota governor:
On May 16th, 2005 he quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war. His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for Congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense Directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have. If he had retired normally and respectfully, you would think he would have ensured his retirement documents were correctly filled out and signed, and that he would have ensured he was reduced to Master Sergeant for dropping out of the academu. Instead he slithered out the door and waited for the paperwork to catch up to him. His official retirement document states, SOLDIER NOT AVAILABLE FOR SIGNATURE.
Alpha News interviewed Behrends in 2022.
“The public needs to know how pathetic his leadership was as a National Guardsman,” he said.
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